


holding hands

by hearts_kun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Time, Implied Masturbation, M/M, Obsession, POV First Person, Porn Watching, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-09 05:56:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16444133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_kun/pseuds/hearts_kun
Summary: You and me, holding hands in the middle of the thermal death of the universe. Or maybe not.





	1. your hands

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 29th Oct - Day 1/Rank 1: **Food** | Foil | Antithesis
> 
> (this is a multi-chapter fic, not a collection of separate works)

Your hands were holding a cup of scalding coffee, not backing away from the heat. I saw tiny patterns of pores on your skin; fingers invisibly twitching at the ring of the doorbell; carefully maintained nails. Your hands were so usual, so normal. I felt warmth tracing down my spine as I watched you lift the cup to your dry thin lips, part them and accept the darkness pouring in you. The tip of your tongue slithered at the white edge of the cup for less than a second, catching one little round black drop from sliding down.

I felt my eyes get wet at the sheer gorgeousness of your existence, when suddenly you saw right through me. A gentle smile on your face lightened up the space like a falling star.

“It’s amazingly peaceful here at this hour, isn’t it?”

Then you put your detective gloves back on, hiding skin and bones, and I felt something taken from me as you slowly finished your cup and wished me a good evening before quietly walking away through the disturbing screams of the doorbell. Reality screeched and shrank all over, squeezing me into its thick sickening folds.

I knew then, I wouldn’t breathe normally until I held your hands in my own, naturally and casually, just like it was always meant to be for the two of us.


	2. soulmates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 30th Oct - Day 2/Rank 2: Teamwork | **Partnership** | Compatibility

In the noise of the TV station, in the buzzing crowd of second years, I saw you unexpectedly like a lightning that hit before the thunder. Your eyes were hazy, your movements slowed down, yet restlessness radiating from you, each step so clear — you were going down in front of me. Racing to hell at full speed, detached from everything, barely breathing, sole dot of dirt in between a bunch of funny curious students. I wanted to reach out and touch you with my bare hands, embrace you and destroy you without touching; I pointed at you and told the anchor, “Ask this one, he’ll be paying attention.”

“Phantom Thieves are justice itself,” you said, and I felt connection tangling you and me into a fat slimy knot of misunderstandings, irrational feelings, fears and blind admiration. I smiled at you and I heard your heart beat faster at the other end of the room. My chest burned with anticipation.

We were soulmates, partners destined by fate.


	3. if home feels like porn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1st Nov - Day 4/Rank 4: **Domestic | Home | Trust**

In your attic it felt safe, calm and always empty. I leaned towards your sofa and stretched my leg across the floor, and you giggled and dug your nose deeper in my hair, breathing in hastily. You liked the smell of my shampoo. You liked it when I took off my gloves and held your face. You liked when I acted casual and natural around you, even though ‘natural’ meant ‘fake’. You liked when I closed my eyes, feeling your lips on the top of my head, hearing your body moving on the sofa — and smiled, and purred like a cat, like a beast you managed to tame. Only you didn’t know the beast was you and I was the one taming, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter later.

Sitting on the floor, I was holding my phone at eye level, watching naked bodies move unable to resist the overwhelming heat; hearing you rub against cushions above me and swallow the whines building up your throat. I trusted you to get ahold of yourself, and you bit into that trust and never let go. Because you wanted me to feel like home and if home felt like watching porn alone in the corner, then you wouldn’t dare to intrude.

I could feel your love seething and pouring over the edges of your skull as you pushed yourself one last time with extra force. Two minutes later, I stopped the video. In truth, I hated it.


	4. means freedom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2nd Nov - Day 5/Rank 5: Blackmail | **Exposure** | Trickery

When it finally happened, the warmth and happiness streamed all over me so fast, I couldn’t react, looking you right in the eyes, my mouth agape, I thought the world must have ended.

Your voice ringed with rich silver in it, soft gold in it, shiny mercury burning around the words flowing out of you. “Take off your clothes,” you whispered, holding my face with your perfect ungloved hands, nails scratching my eyelids with painful tenderness, as if we weren’t just calmly studying at the different corners.

Attic felt cold and you felt like the only thing that could ever bring me back to life. Exposed in front of you, I was the rotting meat and you were a starving crow; your hands brought me down to bed and your teeth on my throat brought me up to stars.

There was no pain. Just an endless feeling of being spread open, helpless, drowned in you. No boundaries and no limits; no secrets, no questions, no answers. You felt like a formless mass of darkness embracing me into yourself, and I felt like dust crushed under the weight of your importance, and yet — my own exposure before you led to freedom.

I felt wings break through my back when you came.


	5. you're a phantom thief now

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3rd Nov - Day 6/Rank 6: **Welcome** | Initiation | Cheating

Hostility was stuffing the air with its ugly invisible body: they didn’t want to call you ‘theirs’, they didn’t welcome you, they didn’t make up a party for you. Hissing through clenched teeth, hiding clenched fists, clenching their whole minds, they despised you, and I felt uneasy, hated, despised too. A python was squeezing my organs as I swallowed unborn tears in fear that you’ll leave me and betray me and destroy my dreams. But you didn’t.

“Why don’t we have a welcome party just for the two of us, if it worries you?” you said, rubbing the back of my neck as I was trying not to squirm from pleasure.

We closed up in the evening and ordered sushi, and I brewed some black-black coffee that suited us more than anything else and didn’t put any sugar into it. Bitter, not sweet, we were, yet you let me rest my head on your shoulder and let me whisper all the stupid sappy things I felt; you complimented my coffee and asked for more, and you let me kiss you once and twice, and you kissed me back. You let me fall down but you didn’t let me crash, caught me gently at my hand; I stared at your lips, thin but pink, and couldn’t hear what you were saying, but could only read:

“Remember, you wanted to tell me something.”

And at your words I had to gasp and smile, “Welcome to the Phantom Thieves.”


	6. vertebrae

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 4th Nov - Day 7/Rank 7 & 8: Conclusion | **Betrayal** | Justice?

Blood running down my back was warm. You pushed the knife a bit deeper than you wanted to, I guessed by your frustrated groan behind me, but it didn’t matter. I was going to die either way, so what was the point? Your hands ran gently along my spine and down, counting its vertebrae. I didn’t feel pain at first, just the tenderness of your touch. It was our most intimate moment, then. I didn’t feel betrayed. If betrayal meant getting closer to you, then it wasn’t betrayal for me.

Your warm breath brushed the wound as you sighed, and I focused on it. The way you breathed today. Abnormal. You pulled the knife out, I could feel the effort in your hands. I was glad it wasn’t easy for you. Hardships meant bonding. …Then pain rushed into my mind.

Through agony I saw you walk around me and take your gloves off and take my hands in yours. They were cold, and mine were warm — or maybe it was the other way around? You held me as I drifted away bit by bit, dissolving into pain and light that you brought me to. When the light became bright enough, my breath steadied, and my sight became clear to focus on our hands intertwined together. Naturally, just like we were meant to be. Just like I’ve always dreamt.


	7. earlier

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 5th Nov - Day 8/Rank 9 & 10: **Possibility | Acceptance** | Sacrifice

Something was throbbing in me when I thought about you. The warmth and coolness of your attic that I wouldn’t get to experience anymore, your nose buried in my hair as if it was a flower bed. The way you were always clinging to me and the way your eyes would always become dark, deep and hungry whenever I took my gloves off. Your unhealthy obsession, your gentle hugs. Admiration in every glance, every breath, every movement of yours.

The way one night I told you about my plans, and you smiled and said you were alright with it because it was me. Everything was alright for you if it was me. As long as I found my home in you, it was alright. As long as you could drown in me, it was alright.

You said, “I consent to be murdered by your hand,” and laughed, and your eyes stayed still. And I didn’t feel relief then, and I didn’t feel relief after your life was gone.

It wasn’t really you who was an obstacle on my way and neither were the Phantom Thieves. Honestly, it was my feelings to you that kept ruining everything.

And as I was standing in a cold lonely night, reminiscing our past together, some obscure sadness flowed around, tingling in my mind with a thought. How nice it could have been… if I just accepted these feelings a little earlier.


End file.
